I have nothing to declare except my genius - Oscar Wilde
|
|
|
ISPs and search engines are told to fight ‘piracy’
UK CULTURE MINISTER Jeremy Hunt has laid out his plans for tougher internet regulation, an update to the Communications Act that will see ISPs pulled in to the government fight against copyright infringement.
In a speech made to the Royal Television Society Cambridge Convention, Hunt said that he was going to be bold and would apply this new found boldness to decision making.
"Today I want to talk about the need for boldness in a new area... what our next Communications Act should contain," he said. "The first priority must be to capitalise on the extraordinary opportunity presented by our digital and creative industries."
Capitalising on this opportunity means a number of things, the final part of which is the need to update the Communications Act so that it serves as protection against "offensive content and from the damage done by unlawful or unlawfully distributed content."
Although he applauded recent work in the area, such as the suggestion of an internet watershed, Hunt said that work needed to go further, adding that he would pull ISPs into the fight.
"I will therefore consider including in the new Comms Act an obligation on ISPs to ensure all their customers make an active choice about parental controls, either at the point of purchase or the point of account activation," he said.
That's just one part of the nanny internet though. The other part tackles material that it being unlawfully distributed online. Here Hunt wants to take a much tougher line.
"The first argument we need to nail is the idea that tackling this problem is an assault on the 'freedom' of the internet," he said with a nod to pesky libertarians.
"John Stuart Mill defined liberty as the freedom to do anything provided it does not impinge on the freedom of others. Unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft - and a direct assault on the freedoms and rights of creators of content to be rewarded fairly for their efforts," he asserted.
"Fundamental to our concept of both freedom and the law is that it should apply to everyone without fear or favour. This means it must apply equally in the virtual world as in the physical world."
As was suggested earlier this week, Hunt said that online shopping should mirror high street shopping and not allow counterfeit products through its doors.
"The devil of course is in the detail. But we need to explore all options to make life more difficult for sites that ignore the law," he continued.
These details include the possibility that the Government would support a cross industry body that is charged with monitoring the internet and identifying web sites that are breaking its rules. Hunt added that when such sites are discovered they should be dealt with quickly in courts thanks to a streamlined legal process.
ISPs and search engines will also have to get involved and Hunt said that they should make it "harder to access sites that a court has deemed contain unlawful content or promote unlawful distribution of content".
This will extend to advertisers, who will be expected to remove ads from bad web sites and to credit card card firms and banks who must withdraw their services to, he added. µ
Share this:
Share
People who complain are the pirates.
If you do not have money to buy a specific software or money to watch the movie? Then you don't need to see it.
quit being so cheep.
If you don't have the right to re-distribute someone elses content, then don't.
Pirates think that its their right to rip people off, and thanks to pirates, compyright protection/activation schemes have gotten complicated.
Even if you don't think of it as theft, well you are stealing the right to re-distribute and are steeling from the publishers profits. This costs jobs and creates annoyances for other ligit users. So selfish pirates cost everyone, and it discourages other people from making software knowing that it will get ripped off (like me)
If you can't aford the software, use the free version or open source version. With millions of application/software out on the net, I am sure there is a free program for everything, so there is no reason to pirate.
Why should a pirate thing he deserves to get it for free, when a honest person pays for it and pays for the further developement of software? why should the pirate get the free ride and leech off/steal of the back of others?
By making content available online, you are encouraging others to pirate. And people who pirate encourage others (such as mom and dad and gradparent by installing the free version/pirated). If you are going to pirate, don't push others or force your influence on others to break the law, keep your evil habbit to yourself.
When I had a computers store, most of the computers hard pirated windows installed, it hurt the customers as they could not install updates and got a virus. Also I was always asked for the 'free version' of office or windows. And software in my computer store didn't sell due to high piracy rates in the area. I was so pissed off. I refured to work on any windows computers without COA sticker, unless they wanted to install a real version.
Piracy was killing my buisness.
Also in Erope where I always go, piracy of movies killed the video stores and they went out of buisness.
So piracy is costing jobs.
"Unlawfully distributing copyrighted material is theft"
NO, IT ISN'T
This Minister of the Crown and his ill-advisers either don't know the law or are being disingenuous.
Simple answer to be used by ISP's:
"We will always fight piracy with the same energy and effort as we will fight propaganda and political corruption and fascism"
Them:
"Oh, Uh.. never mind then"
He is clearly ignorant of how networks work and that all you are going to do is waste the country's money. Whats worse is any solution he might come up with can be worked around easily by free proxy software and a friend in another country.
These things just cant be resolved until the next evolution of internet protocols is released. Right not networks are designed to interconnect easily, anyone can redirect the internet.
... for putting the word "piracy" in quotes. It's time for everyone to admit that there is no law whatsoever that equates "copyright infringement" to "theft" or "piracy".
Hollywood and the RIAA are trying to convince people of the opposite, and, thanks to the access they have to TV and Radio, it seems to be working.
Oh, and copyright law is overrated. It's like speed limits. Everyone agrees that you can't not have a law against speeding, but everyone breaks the law once in a while.
"we need to explore all options to make life more difficult for sites that ignore the law,"
Like a national firewall?
99.999% of the time these sites are not hosted in the UK, so how could the UK have any lawful jurisdiction over them?
Just face it, there will always be sites who distribute other peoples' music and films for free, sell credit card details, drugs, share Sky encryption cards and even offer up unsavoury types of pr0n. As long as there is a demand there will always be someone willing to supply it. The nature of the interent is that it does not have a central hub, people will always be one step ahead of any attempt to block certain sites with encryption, proxies... and who knows what the future will bring?
Copyright is an abstract. How can it possibly be stolen?? You have to have removed something 'physically' from someone's possession for it to be theft. Copying can never be theft.
If i have an idea, but i tell someone else about it, then why would i complain that they now know.
If i write a song, record it and then make it available to others, then how can i complain about what these people do with that song. It ceases to be mine any longer.
These things only truly belong to you whilst no one else knows, and if these creators really wanted their creations to be solely theirs, then they shouldn't be distributing copies of them to start with.
I, like so many others do not recognise this as law. The internet has a far more enlightened way of conducting itself than the laws of the physical world. And it's the physical world that should be taking its cue from the internet.